"you used to be alive, now you're almost mythic."

-- @olarudenicka for fashion

[junkfoodcinemas]

BACKROOMS (2026) dir. Kane Parsons

[sublimepeachtriumph]

5/5 stars, this horror film was art

Most horrifying scenes to me were just the ambient, low-grade terror of that windowless, carpeted, prefab, flourescent-lit unpeopled space, the part where they show a cross-section of it descending forever downwards and the ending that suggests Mary will be forever confined, with her memories of her own spaces (childhood home, adult home, office) now being replicated successively like archaeological layers descending into abstractions. Clark's explanation that the place misremembers people and things is such a wonderful elaboration of Foucault's History of Madness. Michel Foucault would have loved the Backrooms.

To me, the date they chose to set this film in (1990) is quite a fascinating choice because this is around the time when Reagan's deinstitutionalization is beginning to entirely unravel the mental health institutions in the US. He was governor of California and implemented these policies there before he became president which makes the setting apt. So, Mary's mother is admitted to an asylum that looks clean and well-maintained, staffed by nurses in uniforms. However, Clark must consult a private therapist (Mary) for treatment and asks her if she has ever "5150'ed" anyone (reference to California's code for involuntary hold on a person at the recommendation of a professional). Her self-help style ads and book show (as she herself admits) that she is not able to heal anyone but now must market herself independently as a cross between a spiritualist and a scientist. Ultimately, her own life is going to be owned by a corporate entity to make this up to date with trends in our hellish present orchestrated by Reagan's institutional ally, the Heritage Foundation--like the for-profit, indefinite detentions of countless people in certain facilities.

None of these characters ever seem to spend time in beautiful places. All the funds that could have gone towards creating parks, libraries, meeting places for fostering community life are now siphoned off to this necrophiliac metastazing cancer of late stage capitalism--these gloomy backrooms that anyone may be whisked off to at any time.

[harry-crane]

INDEED.COM SKILL LIST:

DIFFICULTY RETAINING AUDIO INFORMATION

SUICIDAL AMBITION

HATRED OF PHONE CALLS

BITCHY AND RUDE

WOULD PREFER TO BE DRUNK AND ON DRUGS

[threesmallcrows]

There is no impulse more rational than love.

"The Wall", Marlen Haushofer. Translated by Shaun Whiteside.

[tuulikki]

"The number of hours that went into making even a shirt with pre-industrial technology was enormous. Depending on how one calculates—i.e. comparing period prices to period income, or comparing the number of labor hours that went into a garment to the cost of that labor at modern minimum wage—one arrives at a shirt costing somewhere between $300 and $4,000. The inventory of Palazzo Medici valued bolts of lowest-quality home-spun linen, the cheapest fabric you could get (used for shirts, bedsheets, and undergarments), at about 0.14 florins ($140) per yard, but wools were much costlier; remember Isabella d’Este being willing to pay 10 per yard ($10,000) for very fine black fabric. The inventory lists several chests of plain, everyday clothing or bedlinens whose contents were worth several thousands. Even at more modest income levels, when estimating the cost of purchasing what was on someone’s body as they stepped out the front door, don't think of buying an outfit, think of buying a car, and if it was an outfit nice enough for a Florentine from a decent family then think about buying a Ferrari or other luxury car.

...

...between the trousseau she provided, and the extra clothes, and jewels bought for young Caterina by her groom’ excited family—which included furs and two sixty-florin strings of pearls—the bride would have worn 400 florins’ worth of wealth ($400,000) on her body as she walked across the city to her husband's home. This was not simple conspicuous consumption: all Florence would see the bridal procession and estimate the power of these families by the wealth they saw. By supplementing the trousseau provided by the Strozzi with even more costly robes and pearls, the Parenti family—new to the popolo and excited to secure a bride from one of the ottimati—was making a modest dowry look larger, and once the bride reached her new home, the pearls and other reusable materials would be resold to buy equipment for the newlyweds' silk business.

Returning to our auto industry simile, for this wedding dress think of the kind of Lamborghini that sets the whole town gossiping when someone parks it on the street, except that it can be trivially disassembled and the parts turned back into investment capital. For the pearls, think stock market shares or savings bonds, high-value investments infinitely resalable. Indeed, the choice of pearls as a form of display was itself strategic: costly embroideries and cut gemstones were both unique and recognizable, so if one resold a particular ruby or yard of brocade, others would recognize it and comment, Ah, X-family is poor enough to need to sell! Not so the smooth homogeneity which made pearls as anonymous as coins, and who would notice if a string that had sixty pearls on it yesterday today has fifty-eight?"

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age

[motgarel]

Saddest cops in Revachol

[jasperrwrites]

“are they lovers?” worse. they were supposed to be and never got the chance to

[bbrothertedd]

[arielseaworth]

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.”

- A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré

[slaughtersafe]

it's too late for us

[slaughtersafe]

ESPRIT DE CORPS

[balaclava-trismegistus]

ngl man "softness is rebellion" "joy is rebellion" all this shit is like really clearly cope by somebody who's never had their ass really reamed out. yeah you can't let those things die but brutality is generally the dominant force out there, and it simply takes advantage of softness. softness and joy are the performance of a fulfilled life. it doesn't thwart anything. its what you're fighting for. you can't just stop at platitudes and feel like you're doing something, you gotta fight dirty to proliferate it.

[greelin]

[COMPLETELY LOVESICK VOICE] he is so strange. And off-putting

[greelin]

i love a man who is strange. And off-putting

[snippy-snappy]

compromised

[castees]

It's very stupid that i only now thought of this but i just realised KIM AND HARRY'S ROOM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ONE SINGULAR THING. THAT'S WHY THERE'S TWO DOORS IN THE BATHROOM AND WHY HARRY'S ROOM DOESN'T HAVE A REAL BED. THE WALLPAPER IS THE SAME ON THE LIEUTENANT'S SIDE AS WELL AND DIFFERENT ON KLAASJE'S.

the universe wanted them to be sad old gay men together from the very beginning, they make me so unnecessarily sick, I'm so normal about them

[vogelys]

After hours

[fafrnok]

[vamptits]

eroticize fetishize unionize.